sports utility vehicle

Toyota is recalling another 22,000 trucks and sport-utility vehicles, this time so that it can repair faulty tire pressure monitoring systems.
Vehicles affected by the recall include the Toyota FJ Cruiser, Land Cruiser, Sequoia, Tacoma and Tundra from the 2008 through 2011 model years.

Ford Motor is recalling nearly 32,000 recent-vintage pickup trucks and crossover vehicles in two separate actions to fix fuel leaks and electrical shorts that may lead to fires, according to a notice posted Wednesday on the National Highway Traffic Safety site.

Major automakers are set to release February sales figures on Tuesday, and analysts expect the reports will show sales improved 20% compared to a year ago as consumers continued to warm to the slowly improving economy -- so far, despite surging oil prices.

The year maybe almost over, but there seems no end to the string of recalls issued by automakers this year. The latest action, announced Thursday, involves some 100,000 vehicles produced by General Motors.

Although Honda and Toyota remain the benchmark of reliability in the U.S. automobile industry, General Motors has made considerable strides in improving the quality of its cars and trucks, according to the magazine's 2010 Annual New Car Reliability Survey.

Toyota Motor is issuing another recall -- this time it involves 740,000 cars and sports-utility vehicles in the U.S. and nearly 600,000 units in Japan to repair a seal on the vehicles' brake master cylinder that may leak fluid and impair braking performance.

Next month, Korean automaker Hyundai will begin building its popular Santa Fe SUV at a Kia plant in West Point, Ga., where its sister company makes the Kia Sorrento SUV. The move is expected to boost the number of workers associated with the plant from 1,900 to 7,000.

Chrysler has taken the wraps off the latest iteration of the Jeep Wrangler sports-utility vehicle. But it will take a discerning eye to spot the subtle differences between the soon-to-be available 2011 model and those of its predecessor -- and that's the point.